


Kittens

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Animal Transformation, Multi, Reincarnation, Were-Creatures, salads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-09-14 11:53:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16912377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: Erebus takes a century-long vacation to live in domestic bliss with kitten!Argel Tal and Cyrene before going back to dealing with Abaddon and the Dark Cardinals’ shit. Why would you have a bunch of power if you can’t do what you want with it? so he’s going to go play with kittens and have regrets about his messed-up student. Cyrene doesn’t like him once she figures out who he is, but she doesn’t know how to throw him out, then gets used to it. There is probably salad involved. It turns out Argel Tal can turn back into a human on the last Wednesday of the month when the three moons are aligned or something stupid like that, and this happens while inside Cyrene’s shirt at some point. ->OT3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A spin-off from sabbatine's Justice of Gods kitten AU

‘My cat likes you, so you can’t be as bad as you think you are.’

‘I don’t know if your cat is the best judge of character there is.’ Really. Really. Erebus would know. It was debatable if _Horus_ had been worse.

Argel Tal jumped on the table and butted his head against Erebus’s hand. Cyrene continued putting food on the neat, chequered tablecloth despite his assurances that she didn’t need to keep feeding him. He stood near a chair, counted on his spell of shadows to obscure the difference, and idly tossed a bowl of salad she had left in front of him. Carefully. If only Astartes-sized salad tongs were a thing that existed. Nah, that would be dumb.

The wholesome goodness of it was almost too much to stand, and the warm fur beneath his fingers almost blocked out the memory of how cold the rain had been. The blood too. It had poured out of his once-student with the frantic pounding of his two hearts, but it had been tepid as in a corpse long dead.

There wasn’t even sadness or regret, just an empty place where someone had been who he had expected to always be there. He remembered every conversation they’d had over the decades and every moment spent in each other’s company and even knowing intellectually that everything ended and he had been the one to plan and do the deed, it didn’t feel real that there wouldn’t be a next time. Death was always only a flash of bolter fire or a sharp cut away, but knowing wasn’t the same as believing. He should have had time to get used to the idea, from the time he’d decided to do it until and since, but he hadn’t. It wasn’t real, and once he shook off the illusion everything would go back to normal, he still thought, rather than fading away into the past.

The cat meowed as Cyrene returned with bowls of milk and fish for him. ‘Keep him out of the lemonade,’ she instructed, even though the cat was climbing everywhere like he was usually not pushed off the table.

‘You don’t know who I am,’ he repeated.

‘I know you’re here because you need to be.’

He’d never gone to her when she had been Confessor of the Word. He didn’t need soft words or someone else’s comfort. He always knew what he needed to do and what the gods asked of him.

Somehow everything had fallen apart, though. The false Emperor becoming a god of the dying Imperium. Horus dead and gone. His Legion on the run. All central power shattered and broken.

 _You made him weak. You let him let himself be weak. It was a mercy by the time I did what had to be done and put him down._ was overlaid with _How did I make himself into someone who couldn’t live with himself? Why didn’t I do better?_

The kitten licked his fingers with sandpaper tongue. ‘Stay. Eat,’ Cyrene told him.

He stayed. He ate. She had baked chicken in spices and taken fresh vegetables from her garden almost as if she was expecting visitors. Argel Tal kept sniffing at the food and looking up at both of them with big green eyes, but graciously allowed them to eat everything that was on their plates.

She washed the dishes and handed them to him to dry with a dishtowel, while Argel Tal watched on, licking his paws and looking disgusted whenever he got splashed with soapy water but not getting out of the way.

He hardly noticed when she put her gloves aside and put her hand in his unarmoured one instead of another plate. She brushed away a spinach leaf he hadn’t noticed was stuck to the corner of his mouth.

She hadn’t misjudged the angle in the least.

‘Cyrene...’

‘I was blind, but now I see. Don’t you think paths cross again for a reason?’

‘I’m just here because of your cat.’ The one time in his life he said the unvarnished truth. She didn’t know. She didn’t know how her saviour had died or how right she was in being reminded of him. The gods provided as they would.

‘You didn’t leave because you don’t want to go back. You’re welcome here until then.’

He had things to do. He had a powerbase to rebuild after the disaster of the Siege. Erebus couldn’t imagine anything more trying than sniping with Kor Phaeron and ‘interpreting’ Lorgar’s orders for the masses and seeing if Abaddon was salvageable and dodging Khârn. The galaxy must know the truth of the gods and it would.

She leaned up on her tip-toes and her lips tasted of vinegar and oil.

Warmth curled through him from his mouth through his hearts to his toes. He meant to be jealous or disgusted by how easily she adjusted for his height and the likelihood Argel Tal was the reason for that. He always meant to hate her, but in her presence he found himself subject to the flaws of his gene-seed, like the rest of the common, vulgar, weak, licentious crowd. He had called Cyrene the Legion’s whore-priestess like that wasn’t sacred to the gods as well.

She lead him back to her bed, too large for her alone and covered in a layer of cat-hair. Soon the Dark Apostle’s armour was scattered on her floor to provide a toy for feline amusement, while the two of them found their own pleasures in each other’s arms.

***

Erebus wasn’t sure what subtle current of the Warp curled past him, but he returned to alertness as only an Astartes could. He had woken when Cyrene had left for her garden, but he had been lounging in half-asleep indolence petting Saviour. It had taken a long time for him to be willing to let her out of his sight no matter how quickly he’d grown to take Erebus’s presence for granted. The cat had been purring contentedly in the warmed Cyrene had left behind in the bed, but the purrs had suddenly taken on a very different tone.

A decidedly human Argel Tal was leaning into his scritches, flickering back and forth between forms like a bad pictcast of a warpstone accident. Instinctively extending his senses in the Warp, Erebus could see this state was no more natural than a stretched rubber band and it would snap back. Perhaps some people were given a blank slate, but it would take many lifetimes for Argel Tal to be able to escape the webs of fate wrapped around his previous one.

How here he was was unclear. ‘Chaplain,’ he murmured, but he was still purring deep in his throat and shivering like he was ticklish at certain spots on his stomach. He pressed against Erebus as if unaware of everything that had happened since he had been a much younger, more innocent man newly inducted into the Legion, and as if unaware he was a man once more and bare without his fur. ‘That’s good.’

‘Then I’ll keep doing it, my boy.’

He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed those beautiful green eyes looking so guilelessly up into his. He was so used to being considered obnoxious and disliked. The unconditional love of a cat was a simple thing when he’d never done anything to make the animal distrust him. This man was a different matter.

Erebus scratched him under the chin just like he liked in cat form. Argel Tal pressed up against him. Maybe if he’d been a different man, Erebus wouldn’t have moved to pet him everywhere and kiss away his helpless mewls.

He had been regretting not keeping Argel Tal closer in this way since their falling out. Then he could have brought him success. Then he could have had him by his side still. He wanted Argel Tal to want him more than he ever had Cyrene. But whatever lessons he should have taught him, the closest they’d come to a lover’s touch before was the gentleness of a knife to the back.

Argel Tal was warm and his skin so soft over hard muscle that Erebus could almost feel the shadow of fur under it, though he could see every stretch of smooth, naked skin. He arched into Erebus’s touch and his whole body vibrated with purrs, broken only by little gasping moans as Erebus reached between his legs and stroked.

Unlike Cyrene, Argel Tal wasn’t fragile, but he was inexperienced and easily overwhelmed and led. ‘Good boy,’ Erebus whispered in his ear as Argel Tal clutched at him. He thrust his hips helplessly with every movement of the hand on his cock. ‘Now come for me.’

Argel Tal yowled as he spent himself in his hand. He buried his head in Erebus’s chest and held on like he hadn’t since he was a neophyte.

Erebus kissed his brow and pet his hair and back, watching the Warp currents until the skin under his hands finally returned to brown tabby fur and the purr quieted from the deep resonance of a broad Astartes chest to a cat’s lung capacity.

When Cyrene returned from the garden to make lunch and Argel Tal ran to her, he couldn’t even bring himself to be jealous.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whose idea was this nonsense anyway?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gen, sfw

‘It wasn’t us,’ said Seneschal Tarasha Euten.

‘It definitely wasn’t us either,’ agree Flag-Captain Lotara Sarrin.

‘I don’t think it was us, but I can’t be sure,.’ said Cyrene. ‘Anyway, I left Erebus and Kor Phaeron locked in a room yowling at each other.’

They watched or listened to their primarchs for awhile. Angron, sabre-teeth bared kept pouncing on motes of dust, while Guilliman, a lion cub, was industriously grooming Lorgar, a lynx, as if unable to differentiate between the tattoos on Lorgar’s skin and dirt.

‘Is this just us here?’ Cyrene asked. She pet a white-bellied kitten in her lap, who purred with two voices.

‘No,’ confirmed Lotara. ‘Or Taye from the Night Lords has suddenly decided to astropath me for no reason questions like “Can cats eat corpses or do they need vitamins?”, “Is declawing bad or do we have space medicine?”, and “Are cats less assholes if I get them neutered?”’ She amused Khârn with a fluffy toy that looks like Abaddon’s hair for him to chase.

‘I can’t speak for the situation outside of Ultramar, but I’ve heard similar reports from Theralyn Fiana, navigator with the Dark Angels.’ Euten kept Drakus Gorod in her lap. He started to meow in distress anytime he was taken more than ten metres from Guilliman. His fur felt nice against her arthritic knuckles.

‘So, are they going to turn back? I need to know before I throw out all the _Conqueror_ ’s rat-traps and buy a bunch of laser pointers.’

‘I have no idea.’ Cyrene might have spent the most time around Chaos sorcerers but it didn’t mean she was one, and this was unprecedented even so. ‘Can we all just call off this war and leave?’

Lotara shrugged. ‘While I consider myself entirely capable of killing you all with no help from men, fighting over which kitten gets to rule the galaxy sounds incredibly stupid.’

‘That’s good, dear,’ said Euten mildly. ‘They’re probably happier as cats anyway.’ Considering how deeply in Cyrene’s cleavage the kitten in her lap had ended up, that was very likely.

‘ _I’m_ happier with them as cats. Is that a lizard? That’s a very nice lizard, Angron. Khârn, you can only eat it if you can detach it from his fang.’

‘Well, I’m going back to Macragge. Where’s home for you, young lady?’

‘Monarchia. But I hear Colchis is nice this time of year.’

‘Ah. Then you have perfectly valid reasons for hating us. If it helps, my lord… my cat… my son… Roboute hates himself for that too, whatever you think of him.’

‘Thank you for your kind words, ma’am. It does help some. And the fact he just coughed up a hairball.’


End file.
